ICYMI: Sarah Keyeski Runs to be a Voice for Rural Wisconsin
MADISON, Wis. — Last week, UpNorthNews published a look into State Senate Democratic candidate Sarah Keyeski’s campaign to represent the 14th Senate District.
Unlike Republican politician Joan Ballweg, Sarah Keyeski will stand up for working families and their unions, protect public schools, and fight to restore reproductive health care freedoms in Wisconsin. Joan Ballweg, on the other hand, has voted to slash public school funding, strip away union rights, and supports an abortion ban with no exceptions for rape or incest. Wisconsinites in the 14th District are tired of Joan Ballweg’s backward vision for Wisconsin. In November, Sarah Keyeski’s bold vision for the future and Wisconsin’s new, fair maps will send Joan Ballweg packing.
UpNorthNews: ‘Action is the Antidote to Despair’ – Sarah Keyeski Runs to be a Voice for Rural Wisconsin
By: Bonnie Fuller
A Joan Baez song lyric helped inspire the creation of Lift Lodi for the mother turned organizer turned Senate candidate.
When Sarah Keyeski says that she wants to be a voice for rural Wisconsin, it isn’t just because a large portion of her district is comprised of rural counties.
The resident of Lodi, population 3,209, grew up with her four siblings on a dairy farm in Cashton, where she spent summers baling hay and picking rocks out of the fields.
Keyeski loved the closeness that she developed on the farm with her brothers and sisters—“we were always together”—but she also credits her rural upbringing for developing her “really strong work ethic,” something that will come in handy if she is elected to represent the 178,000 residents of the 14th Senate District, which covers Richland and Sauk counties, most of Columbia County, and other surrounding areas.
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It was because of her affection for rural communities and small towns that Keyeski and her husband chose to move to Lodi in 2017 and make a home for their blended family of six kids.
“Raising our children in a small town was really important because that’s what I was raised in,” she said, explaining that she wanted her kids to have a wholesome upbringing.
Now, even though her newly-drawn district is “a little less rural now” with Wisconsin’s non-gerrymandered maps, she wants the voters to know that she is very focused on rural needs.
“I want to help protect our small communities. I want to make sure that we have jobs that are sustained in our communities so families don’t have to lose their children to big cities,” she said.
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One fight she’s willing to take on is over the Republican-dominated legislature’s sustained underfunding of public education for 12 years, while directing taxpayer money to school vouchers, which are primarily used by wealthier families for private schools.
Her Republican opponent, Sen. Joan Ballweg, who no longer lives in the redrawn district, has been a supporter of the school voucher system.
“I think that’s fundamentally wrong,” asserted Keyeski. “I think our public dollars need to stay with our public schools. It is draining the resources for our children and that’s a travesty. And again, especially for our small communities that don’t even necessarily have a charter school, but funding is being taken away.”
Keyeski can see that firsthand in Lodi’s schools, one of which her 14-year-old twin daughters attend.
“The class sizes have had to get bigger and the offerings in some ways have had to be limited,” she said.
She sees that the school system isn’t getting enough funding from the state to provide special needs students with the services they require and the board is having to “go to referendum just for operational costs and people are upset.”
“I want us to protect good funding for our public schools because they’re the cornerstone of our community.”
Keyeski also points to Ballweg’s stance against reproductive freedom, which she believes is not in alignment with the majority of local voters.
Ballweg “has written an amendment for fetal personhood,” which gives the same rights to a fertilized egg and fetus as every person.
“I mean, that’s extreme. She is not supportive of having rape or incest be considered as an option for abortion,” Keyeski said.
Ballweg has voted consistently in support of positions taken by Wisconsin Right To Life, though she did support Medicaid expansion to cover moms for 12 months after birth.
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As Keyeski goes door to door speaking with voters, she hears former President Donald Trump’s Project 2025 plan “starting to seep into the ether.” Project 2025 outlines how Trump can try to enforce the 1873 Comstock Act, for example, to end safe abortion care access nationwide.
“People are concerned about how many rights are being stripped away… this a bit more activates women because it’s hitting us first with the [1849] abortion ban that happened,” she said.
Now that Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, are leading the presidential campaign, Keyeski is already seeing positive downstream effects for her race as well.
“I am so encouraged because the momentum of increased volunteer signups, donations, and support for our campaign has really increased.”
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